Less isn't always more

Kevin Kovalsky, M.D., obviously enjoys teasing his guests when he deadpans that he and his wife have been married for 27 years, and they're just starting to get along.

The retired family practice physician is kidding, of course, but he and his spouse, Priscilla, were serious about taking the time to get their new condo just right.

"We bought our first home on our very first trip to the area," he reported.

"On a vacation here, in 2000, we selected a carriage home in Estero, but later we realized high-rise life was what we wanted."

"We also rushed to get that home decorated before we moved in," his wife and former office manager added. "We opted for safe things — lots of beige and white — and ended up with too little color and not enough character."

Once they'd selected a four-bedroom unit in the partially built Treviso at Pelican Landing's Colony Golf and Bay Club, the former Reading, Pa., residents vowed to take their time fine-tuning their new environment.

"We had the furniture from our first Florida home and a few things from Pennsylvania, like Ken's antique pie chest," Priscilla Kovalsky explained, "and we had our art collection — that's one thing that didn't fall victim to haste."

She explained that the design professional with whom she worked on the first home saw photographs of the art collection and advised them to get rid of it, because the pieces, he said, wouldn't work in Florida.

After mulling it over, however, the couple moved the pieces to Florida anyway, and invited their longtime friend and art dealer, from whom they'd purchased most of the works, to have a go at placing them.

"He did such a great job that even the decorator was impressed," Priscilla Kovalsky declared. "When we moved to the condo, we had gained enough confidence to hang the art ourselves." Not without a little help, however.

"We invited our friends to take a lamp and one piece of art from our old home and drive them to the new one," she explained.

"We had a motorcade driving up to our building, and when everyone got here and delivered their cargo, we had a party."

The professional art covers the dining room's two walls, and Ken Kovalsky's amateur photographs create an intriguing nature gallery in the hall. Though blessed with plenty of framed art, the new condo owners felt their transplanted furniture needed some accessorizing.

"Thank goodness I play golf," Priscilla Kovalsky said with a chuckle.

"It was through reciprocal play that we became interested in The Colony in the first place, and it was through the women I play with that I learned that one of our number, Patty Payne, does decorating work."

"Patty came up and agreed with me completely," her husband said with a grin. "We needed more color and we needed more stuff. She said things looked too sterile." To launch the project, Payne, of PRP Interiors, brought 58 accessories to the unit.

"As a minimalist by nature, I was overwhelmed when they were all in the foyer," Priscilla Kovalsky recalled. "But she walked around and placed everything so perfectly, we ended up taking 57."

Payne said this assignment was like adding icing to the cake.

"They already had beautiful furniture," she observed. "It just needed the visual punch accessories can deliver." Over the course of the next year, the couple worked with their consultant and sometimes on their own to add to the decor.

"We had all the furniture for the foyer," Priscilla Kovalsky recalled, "but Patty helped us choose a wallpaper that looked like faux painting and added drama to the space." The same scenario played out in Ken Kovalsky's office, where the honey leather sofa and office gear were in place, but a snazzy cork wallcovering added pizzazz.

The couple chose taupe/cream, rough-edge stone tile for their main living areas and opted for tumbled stone tiles for their kitchen backsplash. About a year after they moved in, they made an esthetic and practical improvement by using the same tumbled stone to tile the surface underneath their breakfast bar.

Payne thought the white walls were too stark, so the painters were called in to apply a warmer tone she called blonde.

"We had it between the chairs, but it just wasn't right. She moved it to the foot of our bed, where it's perfect." Payne also found a kidney-shaped, tortoise shell box table to go between the chairs. It coordinates with a similarly surfaced round table in the living room area.

"We had the sofa and chairs for the living room, but we bought a new entertainment center," Ken Kovalsky stated. "But getting me a new TV took too much time. That purchase kept getting postponed as we completed other projects, like furniture for Priscilla's office, or replacing the powder bath pedestal sink with a furniture-style cabinet.

"Finally, I said the time has come," he said with a smile. "We got the biggest TV that would fit." The man of the house, a cancer survivor since 1997, is no couch potato, however. He is a brisk walker who regularly completes 5 miles before 6 a.m. four times a week.

In more relaxing moments, he might stretch out on the lanai, where he can see the preserve, the golf course and Estero Bay, or he might catch some Zs in the master suite, where the repositioned chest and a Tuscan-themed wall hanging complement the holdover bed. It's now resplendent with a textured taupe bedspread discovered in the Restoration Hardware catalog.

Two cats, Trevi and Max, are permanent occupants of the condo unit, but guests luxuriate in a room embellished with a new magenta silk bedspread and tortoise shell woven wood roll ups.

"The cats aren't even jealous," Ken Kovalsky says with a straight face, "that the sculpture my father made of our old Newfoundland dog has a prominent space in the guest room."

In the switch from minimal to maximal decoration, the lady of the house became enthusiastic once she saw the light.

"When I realized how much better the accessories made the furniture look," she said, laughing,"I wanted more."